Out of Lockdown
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The prime minister is due to announce on Monday his plan for lifting the current lockdown in England. He says he wants progress to be cautious but irreversible. And he, like many, is saying that decisions on how and when to lift lockdown need to be driven by data not dates. So what are the risks, for example, in sending primary age children back to school? Of opening pubs? Of opening non-essential shops? To what extent would any of this be possible without the rollout of the vaccination programme? And why is vaccination alone not a magic bullet? With Professor Azra Ghani of Imperial College, London; Professor Stephen Reicher of St. Andrews University; and Dr. Mike Tildesley of Warwick University.
Producers: Tim Mansel, Sally Abrahams and Kirsteen Knight Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.4 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Aronovich. |
| 0:09.3 | We're in a room where the top experts and 28 minutes come together to understand the big issues of the day. |
| 0:15.8 | And what bigger than this? |
| 0:17.4 | We're about to hear the Prime Minister's plan for the safe route out of lockdown. |
| 0:21.7 | What do the experts think should be in it? |
| 0:32.2 | It's been a disastrous winter in terms of the pandemic. |
| 0:35.8 | But now, 16.5 million of us have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, |
| 0:41.3 | and the measures taken over the last two months are bringing down infection rates |
| 0:45.3 | and with them hospitalisations and deaths pretty quickly. |
| 0:49.3 | If you're listening to us in Scotland, |
| 0:50.3 | Nicola Sturgeon has already indicated her strategy for the near future. |
| 0:57.5 | And for those of you in England, all is due to be revealed on Monday. |
| 1:01.7 | Boris Johnson has promised to lay out a plan for the lifting of restrictions and a return to something like life as we once knew it. |
| 1:05.1 | We want this lockdown to be the last. |
| 1:09.3 | And we want progress to be cautious, but also irreversible. |
| 1:15.4 | But on what basis will he have drawn up his plan? What will the experts have been saying to him? |
| 1:20.8 | Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out. |
| 1:36.5 | Joining me today, a three scientists who are going to advise me on the way forward based on their best knowledge of how the virus behaves and how we behave. |
| 1:42.3 | With me, a Professor Azragani, an infectious disease epidemiologist of Imperial College in London, |
| 1:44.9 | the behavioural psychologist Professor Stephen Reischer from the University of St Andrews, and Dr Mike Tilsley, Associate Professor at the University |
| 1:50.3 | of Warwick, an epidemiologist and lead author of a recent report on schools on the pandemic. |
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